San Bernardino must clamp down on college partygoers: Letters

What happened early March 23 at 5500 N. Osborne Court in San Bernardino was inevitable. Within the past seven years, subsequent to the downturn of the housing market, there has been an ever-increasing number of single-family homes in the Cal State San Bernardino area being purchased by absentee landlords and rented to groups of students (some belonging to fraternities and sororities).

Most of these absentee landlords do not care about our neighborhoods or the community, since they live elsewhere. Their only concern is whether or not they get their rent check on time every month. They are unconcerned about the illegal drug use, illegal drug sales, underage drinking, parties, loud noise, beer bottles (broken and unbroken), plastic cups, trash, vomit, DUI incidents, and damage to neighboring properties.

Having lived next door to one of these houses for the past two years I am well aware of the nuisance these houses cause the local neighborhoods. The only way such issues are addressed is when I submit a service request to code enforcement through the city of San Bernardino website, which is a time-consuming process. Although code enforcement can address the property issues they cannot address the safety and nuisance issues surrounding these types of houses. When you mix an excessive number of partygoers with drinking (including underage), drug use, loud music and other uncontrolled activities you have a recipe for disaster. Eventually altercations are going to break out and the guns are going to come out.

That’s what happened on March 23 and that is what will happen again unless Police Chief Jarrod Burguan and CSUSB President Tomas Morales become proactive in addressing these issues. I would think that the Police Department would want to address the problem before it becomes a high priority, such as what happened.

CSUSB also needs to take disciplinary action, including expulsion, against students who are conducting these illegal activities in the community.

The March 23 incident was an unnecessary, tragic loss of life. However, next time it may be an even greater tragedy when an innocent victim, resident or even a young child gets caught in the crossfire.

— Gene Swank, San Bernardino

City has plenty of low-income housing

Recently, as I drove east on Fifth Street past garbage-strewn lots, abandoned buildings, barricaded homes, pimps, prostitutes, bums and ex-felons, I wondered what had become of that once-proud All-America City known as San Bernardino.

Was I visiting Tijuana? Or a vast junk yard void of civic pride, responsible citizenship and residential beauty?

Gone are the small-business owners, well-manicured houses, the Carousel Mall, paved streets and, with the exception of the California Theatre, cultural venues and events once enjoyed by all.

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Now the City Council has voted to “revitalize” the Waterman Gardens complex with “mixed-use” affordable housing — this is a grand mistake. The city is broke. And who pays for this scheme? Working people? As any wise architect knows, form follows function.

Replacing Waterman Gardens (built in 1943 for military families off base) with modernized facilities in a high-crime neighborhood will change or improve neither the behavior nor the character of the people who live there. As we have seen in Fontana, large apartment complexes whose residents do not pay property taxes are magnets for drug abuse and serious crime.

With 58 percent of San Bernardino residents on welfare in 2013, the last thing the city needs is more low-income housing.